It is possible to question the moral integrity of creating entertainment out of mass death without being an exceptionalist. The assumption that cinema is adequate to represent the horrors of the Holocaust is challenged by Claude Lanzmann’s documentary “Shoah” (1985), which uses oral testimonies instead of archival footage. This documentary set a standard of artistic integrity for all future Holocaust films, contrasting with the approach taken by most films such as “Schindler’s List,” “Life Is Beautiful,” and “The Pianist.”
These films focus on the victims, leading to a distorted understanding of history by portraying the Nazis as stock villains without delving into their motivations. Primo Levi’s Auschwitz memoir “The Truce” (1963) notes the difficulty of understanding or justifying the Nazis’ actions, concluding that their words and deeds are counterhuman and nonhuman.
Imre Kertesz, another chronicler of Auschwitz, condemned representations of the Holocaust that seek to deny its connection to human nature. Director Jonathan Glazer, not an exceptionalist himself, attributes his interest in the Holocaust to his family history, as his grandparents were Eastern European Jews who fled persecution. He acknowledges the inspiration Hitler drew from ideologies like Manifest Destiny, which also resulted in mass deaths.